As the use of service desks expands beyond IT, it’s worth considering how the ITIL service lifecycle fits for other business teams. Applying the lifecycle model helps ensure that all of an organization’s services are strategically designed, consistently available and adaptable in an ever-changing business environment. Helping business teams apply the principles, processes, roles and performance measures is a great way for IT to demonstrate value throughout the organization.

Any team needs procedures to ensure the reliable delivery of their services. In the case of using a service desk to implement ITIL like practices for non-tech teams, there needs to be a partnership between the agents of the business team who are responsible for providing the service/responding to customer requests and the IT staff (JIRA administrator) who ensures that the service desk is configured correctly and that the team knows how to use it to its full potential.

Service Strategy

Obviously, every business team will have its own service portfolio and its own relationships to manage. What is desirable and possible will be different for each team. For instance, while all teams have to conform to business constraints, Finance will be concerned with ensuring compliance with auditor requirements, while HR will need to ensure the highest possible level of confidentiality. IT can play an pivotal role at this stage by informing leadership of the advantages of delivering customer service via a help desk model. Their familiarity with service desk features, as well as the myriad of available add-ons can help ensure that the strategy developed takes in the full range of what's possible, rather than being limited to antiquated models.

Service Design

The service design phase represents a unique window of opportunity. Teams can choose not only to automate the service management, but also to review, revise and refine their processes. This is the time to consider whether or not things have to be done the way they’ve always been done in the past.

The JIRA Administrator should work closely with business teams during this phase, helping them to understand possible workflows, the value of a documented knowledge base and what support will be needed to ensure continuous availability and security. Again, the JA is there to represent what's possible for teams who may not be familiar with all that technology has to offer. Demonstrating products and functionality, such as ProForma's library of customizable forms, can help calm fears about implementing a new system, and even get team members excited about what they'll be able to accomplish.

Service Transition

Service transition is especially important in the case of business teams that are implementing the use of a service desk for the first time. The JIRA Administrator will want to work closely with key members of the business team during this phase, ensuring the correct configurations are put in place, as well as offering guidance and reassurance as the team gains confidence using the service desk. It’s likely that the business team member who serves as the project manager for the transition will become a champion of using the service desk and will identify opportunities for optimizing service delivery.

Service Operation

The JIRA administrators will have worked closely with the business team during the service design and transition phases. Once the business team has their service desk up and running, the team’s agents will take ownership of operating the service. However, the administrator remains available to business teams to respond to incidents and events, and to mentor team members as their use and understanding of the service desk increases.

Continual Service Improvement

This is where IT solutions, especially online forms, really shine. When a process changes, the form(s) only need to be changed in one place. Since customers are making their requests online, there's no risk of someone submitting an outdated form that they saved to the hard drive years ago. Best of all, teams are able to update their forms when needed, without waiting for assistance from IT. This means that the process that's "out there" is always the process that's current.

Those processes are constantly being refined and improved. When a business team uses a service desk to manage customer requests, then all of the data about the type, frequency and time needed to resolve those requests is collected. JIRA compiles the data into useful reports that allow leadership to identify areas of high demand, bottlenecks in the process and opportunities for improvement. And this of course invites a review of the service strategy and begins the cycle again. In the case HR, implementing an ITIL model might not only result in improved services, it might mean that your HR team can get back to focusing on the big things – like how to attract and retain talent. A finance team might find that as their services improve, they become more and more efficient resulting in savings to the organization.

Just as a service desk such as JSD provides a convenient, efficient way for business units like HR and finance to serve their internal customers, the ITIL service lifecycle is a viable model for ensuring planned, consistent and adaptable delivery of those services. If you're interested in helping your business teams manage and maintain their own JSD implementation, check out the ProForma add-on. We've created a library of customizable business forms for JSD, designed to streamline processes and request management for HR, Marketing, Finance and other teams. A full functioning service desk for your teams is just a few clicks away.